Days after a hostel warden of an engineering college at Aushapur in Telangana’s Medchal-Malkajgiri district filed a complaint alleging that unknown persons were cyberstalking the institute’s students and sending lewd messages to them, the police have arrested four men in connection with the incident. The accused, all aged below 20, have been booked under several sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Information Technology (IT) Act, said Rachakonda Commissioner of Police DS Chauhan at a press meet on Saturday, January 7.
According to the police, women students of the Vignana Bharathi Institute of Technology had been receiving abusive and vulgar calls and messages from unknown numbers on their WhatsApp and Instagram over the past several days. “The perpetrators had also verbally threatened the students, sending them online locations and asking them to go to these spots, and then warning them that their lewd pictures would be posted on social media if they did not listen,” the police said. On January 4, the institute’s warden filed a complaint in this regard.
At the press meet, Commissioner Chauhan said that the police had established special teams to gather and analyse data to trace the perpetrators soon after receiving the complaint. “We identified the accused at the Ghatkesar bus stand and arrested them on Saturday. The accused are all below 20 years of age and hail from Guntur and NTR districts. The police have seized four phones, using which they were running four WhatsApp groups by the names Hacking Scam, Enter the dragon, XXX Teja Rowdy, and King is Back,” he said. The accused reportedly used seven different numbers to harass the women.
According to media reports, the police had formed four teams to trace the perpetrators. The first accused to be identified was a man named Pradeep. Through further investigation, the police were able to trace his associates Ganesh, Satish, and Durga Prasad. None of the accused are students at the college.
The first of the series of incidents happened in November, when an unidentified man called a first-year engineering student from an unknown number. They proceeded to have a few conversations and send each other messages. Later on, however, the student stopped texting him and refused to answer his calls. She ignored his messages and calls from several other phone numbers as well.
The accused then allegedly went on to contact several other women students of the college via online platforms, demanding their nude photos. He also altered the students’ WhatsApp display photos into lewd pictures and sent them back to the women, threatening to post these on social media if they did not send him their nude photos or make nude video calls. No money was demanded.
After a number of students complained to their parents and the warden of the hostel, the warden contacted the police. Meanwhile, the parents and students organisations have staged protests on the college premises demanding a speedy investigation into the matter.
“So far in this case, several students came forward and they were examined. Previous history of the accused will also be ascertained by contacting other State Police as to whether the accused are involved in similar cases,” the official press note stated.
The Commissioner told the media that all the accused were booked under IPC sections 354(D) stalking, 509 (insult the modesty of a woman), 469 (whoever commits forgery), and sections 67, 67(A) (transmission of sexually explicit content) of the IT Act.